The Watch that Ends the Night (Hugh MacLennan)

First published in 1958, this Hugh MacLennan novel is set in Montreal primarily in the 1930s and 1950s. Written while MacLennan's wife Dorthy suffered from a fatal illness, The Watch that Ends the Night is a novel about continuing to live while waiting for death. As Jerome, a doctor and veteran of multiple wars puts it near the close of the novel, Catherine--who has had a fatal heart condition since birth-- is living her death. George, Catherine's second husband, and the narrator, describes his marriage with Catherine as beginning in the early evening of her life. Quite literally, George and Catherine are on a death watch.

Like many of MacLennan's novels, The Watch that Ends the Night is also about coming to terms with the First and Second World Wars. More than once MacLennan mentions Hemingway. For MacLennan, his characters as he portrays them during the 1930s--as products of the First World War and the Depression--are his lost generation. Jerome, Catherine's first husband who turns up at the start of the novel after having been thought dead for a decade, is the most symbolic figure of this generation. Jerome, after enduring the horrors of the First World War, was swept up in a political ideology and climate which, combined with his need to find a new "god" caused him to abandon his wife and daughter. 

Also hanging over this novel is the threat of nuclear war. The Watch that Ends the Night is more overtly political than some of MacLennan's other novels. George, who is a radio personality for the CBC, has come to the conclusion that events cannot be controlled or understood, and even when you believe that you can understand them, it doesn't do you any good. George, like many people in the 1950s, is disenchanted. He's very cynical towards any political system that claims to understand everything. "In the thirties we tried to make gods out of the political systems and worship and serve them," he tells the reader (p.334). For George, the cold war environment wields a sword over the heads of everyone which could drop and kill them all at any moment, in the same way that Catherine's bad heart wields a sword over her life and his life. 

Overall, The Watch that Ends the Night is beautiful novel. I won't pretend that the final two chapters didn't nearly bring me to tears because they did. Once again I'm left wishing that everyone would read Hugh MacLennan.